President-elect Donald Trump successfully courted more Latino voters again this election despite promising mass deportations and continually demonizing migrants from predominantly Latin American countries.
While Trump lost the overall share of Latino votes to Vice President Harris, who won 53%, support for him was up 13 percentage points from 2020, according to national exit poll data.
Contributing to that is Latinos feeling they are worse off financially now than they were four years ago, according to Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, cultural strategist and founder of We are Mas, a communications firm in Florida.
But she added that Trump’s success with Latinos goes beyond economic concerns and may also have to do with how this community perceived the idea that democracy was under threat or the extremes the candidates argued the other represented.
Pérez-Verdía said Latinos may have been turned off by Democrats because of language they have used in recent election cycles. She points specifically to words like “Latinx,” which research shows very few Latinos identify with, and the “progressive” label, a term that Latinos of specific national origins could associate with communism and figures like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
“Well, if it sounds like a duck and it looks like a duck, it must be a duck, which is not the case. Kamala Harris is not a socialist, but that’s what they feel,” Pérez-Verdía told Morning Edition.
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